


Loosening

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Nip/Tuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-23
Updated: 2004-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1637348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wine, frustration and knives. Set at some ambiguous point early on in Season 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loosening

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kel.

 

 

Christian remembers the first time he walked in on Sean and Julia. The covers balled up and sweaty, hanging listlessly over the side of Julia's bed, Sean's ass white and panicky with speed as he jerked down into Julia, up and down again...

Julia met his eyes over Sean's heaving shoulder. For a long time - well, ten seconds at most, but it seemed like a long time - they held each other's gaze. Julia was doing her best to look unmoved in a way that Christian knew all too well: a triumphant stare with a thrust-out jaw and clouded eyes. Despite her efforts, Christian could see her reaction to every move: the almost-groans, the nearly-sighs, the might-have-been orgasms. And Sean humped on, oblivious. Endearing, really.

Christian almost did something to break up the tableau. "I never thought Sean would be on top," would have been a good one. Or, "Hey, you shouldn't have started without me," could have been interesting. But he didn't. He pulled the door shut again, the wood flashing across Julia's icy stare to block it out, and then calmly, methodically, he went to find something to fuck.

Sean's less endearing in middle age, like he's figured out that someone's watching, like he knows he can't capture all of Julia's attention. Christian doesn't mind, though. It makes him jittery. It makes him interesting.

"We cannot give that woman another vaginal tightening! I'm serious, Christian. She's still young enough to get pregnant and she might want another baby. It's far too dangerous to have the birth canal so narrow."

"Some women would cheat on their husband if he had a dick that small," Christian pointed out. "I thought you'd approve. She's taking a proactive approach to safeguard her marriage." Sean, contrary to accepted pop psychology, is pretty well-endowed. It's Christian's pet theory that his frustrations result from not knowing what to do with his dick rather than not having much of one to do anything with.

"Not all happy marriages have to pass through our doors, Christian," Sean grated. Christian supposed he was thinking of Julia, of her unthinking revulsion towards their careers. She'd sworn once never to get, never to want the alterations surgery could give her, and it was one of Christian's private goals to one day make her sigh with envy at a body he had created.

Looking at Sean's turbulent face, it occurred to him: what if Sean was imagining going under the knife himself? What if Sean were ever to make such a desperate last-ditch attempt to save his marriage?

Christian quailed. The images rushed in at him, of Sean laid out before him, eyes closed in the anaesthetic simulacrum of peace, and the Magic Marker of pseudo-perfection striking out hard-edged across his warm body. Liz would hand Christian the scalpel. Christian would take it blindly, staring out from above his surgical mask, the beads of sweaty fear already beginning to make transparent its fabric. And he would cut into his best friend, so that Julia... Julia would... No.

"Christian, you could at least pretend that medical ethics doesn't send you into a coma," Sean said crossly.

"Right." What was the last thing either of them had said? Sean seemed to have moved closer to him during Christian's reverie. "Marriage. You don't want to fix it."

"What... the hell... do you mean by that?" Sean breathed, his teeth still clamped firmly together, and really it would amazing how he could be so clearly comprehensible with such a restricted position. If Christian didn't help Sean loosen the muscles in his jaw, he thought, the man was gonna explode.

Or maybe explosions were what was needed.

"Clearly, you've got issues that go way beyond Mrs. Harbison and her anorexic cunt," Christian told Sean, each word crisply fired from between his lips. "Let it out, Sean. I'm the one who's depraved, remember? I can't be shocked. Tell me about your dye-job wife, two-child garden-fence traumas. Tell me how helping the little girl to become a productive member of society doesn't leave Julia with much of a sex drive - or maybe how Matthew's got so wise at night that you don't even dare to play footsie when he's around. Tell me what your problem is, Sean, or by God I'll find out myself!"

He was standing. Standing red-faced and out of breath, with the memory of a scream on his throat like the lingering trace of vomit after a bad night. Christian blinked.

Sean retreated into a chair, and Christian, feeling extremely foolish, did the same.

"You don't visit us as often as you used to," Sean told him with a curious smile on his face, and Christian, in a daze, agreed.

Mrs. Harbison was refused a third vaginal tightening. She took herself off to Merril Bobolit, who for a substantial fee was happy to turn her into a woman who could have uproarious sex with her husband and none at all with anybody else. The lucrative surgery, Merril let Christian know beforehand, was scheduled for Friday.

Friday night found Julia drinking down the bottle of expensive wine Christian had presented to her with the half-apologetic smile he'd perfected over the many years of knowing Julia. Sean was perched rigidly on the corner of his chair, gripping the stem of his empty wine-glass too tightly. Christian refilled it for him once Julia had topped up her third glass.

"I did mean for you both to share it," he said when Julia shot an annoyed glance at him.

"Of course you did," Sean spoke up. He looked directly into Christian's eyes, then slid his gaze away as if embarrassed. "But there isn't really enough for... all three of us to share. I'll get another bottle." He disappeared through the door into the kitchen.

"What's with him?" Christian asked Julia.

She regarded him for a moment over the rim of her glass, blue eyes clouded over with a look he couldn't quite identify. "I told him what happened between us that day."

Which day? Christian thought. Which day of which year?

"And how you set me up to walk in on you and those doppelganger sluts. All of it."

Oh. That day. Fucking identical blonde college chicks had never before seemed like such an altruistic act. "Well. How did he take that?"

"Strangely well, actually." Julia took another sip from her glass. "Right now, I think he's just nervous."

Julia was dressed with especial care tonight, Christian noticed.

Nervous?

Sean returned with the new bottle and, after a nod from Julia, sank down on the couch beside Christian.

 

 

 


End file.
